Path 2

Path 2

Sarah Palin: birther?

December 6, 2009

Alaska’s former governor talked to the press about her otter-skin purse, the president’s communist tendencies, and side dishes for an open-air liberal roast at the Gridiron Dinner this week, but she didn’t mention her interest in the “rightful” issue of Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

In an interview with radio talkshow host Rusty Humphries, Palin told Humphries that she wouldn’t have to make Obama’s notional foreign birth an issue in a 2012 presidential run because it already is an issue, and it should be.

“Um, I think the public, rightfully, is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that. Um, I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think enough members of the electorate still want answers… I think it’s a fair question, just like I think past associations and past voting records, all of that is fair game.”

She almost immediately backed herself off on the legitimacy of the question, suggesting that conspiracy theories about Obama were actually justifiable as karmic balance for questions about Trig Palin’s parentage. In a follow-up Facebook post, Palin denied asking for Obama’s birth certificate or denying his citizenship, and again compared birther theories to questions about baby Trig from “many on the left” which were not so much rightful as questions they had a right to ask.

Not-particularly-left Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan, who aside from an anonymous poster in the Daily Kos community was pretty much the only person raising those questions, immediately leaped into action and raised them again.